“When you see a very beautiful face, it’s stunning, and you yourself become stupefied. So you project your own stupidity onto the person you’re looking at.”

Variant: When you see a man of worth, think of how you may emulate him. When you see one who is unworthy, examine yourself.

Travis McGee series, (1979)

2000s, Progressive magazine interview (2003)
Context: This supposed idyllic society we have is the most confused, warped, addicted society in the history of the world. We are addicted to power, we're addicted to our own image of ourselves, to violence, divorce, abortion, and sex. Any whim of the human character is deeded in us 100-fold. We're number one in child abuse, pornography, divorce, all of these categories; that's how we get paid back. You can't project something on someone else that is damaging that person and not become that yourself, it seems to me.

As quoted by Wayne Dyer http://n-spire.com/archives/011802.html <br class="br">The Mahābhāṣya

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)
Context: I’ve seen people who discovered a great meaning in their jobs and they became so absorbed in that that they didn’t have time to become self-centered. They loved their job. And the great prayer that anyone could pray at that point is: “O God, help me to love my job as this individual loves his or hers. O God, help me to give my self to my work and to my job and to my allegiance as this individual does.” And this is the way out. And I think this is what [Ralph Waldo] Emerson meant when he said: “O, see how the masses of men worry themselves into nameless graves, while here and there, some great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.” And this becomes a point of balance when you can forget yourself into immortality. You’re not so absorbed in self, but you are absorbed in something beyond self.

Mind
Source: I am That, P.121.